Burhop, E. H. S.

Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop, (31 January 1911 – 22 January 1980) was an Australian physicist and humanitarian. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, Burhop was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to study at the Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford. Under the supervision of Mark Oliphant, he investigated nuclear fusion. He produced a non-relativistic theory of the Auger effect in 1935, followed by a relativistic treatment the following year. He later wrote a monograph on the subject. He returned to the University of Melbourne as a lecturer in 1936, and helped Professor Thomas Laby build up the physics department there. During the Second World War, he worked in the Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney, where he produced a laboratory model of a cavity magnetron. In September 1942, he returned to Melbourne as the officer in charge of the Radar Research Laboratory, where he continued the development of cavity magnetrons and reflex klystrons for radar sets. In May 1944, he became one of three Australian physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bombs. In early 1945, Harrie Massey offered Burhop a position as a lecturer in the Mathematics Department at University College, London. He fostered international cooperation in nuclear physics. While never formally charged with atomic espionage or so much as directly questioned by investigators, due to his leftist political views, anti-nuclear activism as well as his personal links to exposed Soviet spies, Burhop was the subject of comprehensive surveillance on the part of the UK, US and Australia's counterespionage agencies in the 1940s–1950s, a fact that was publicised in 2019.